Learn Different: Silicon Valley Disrupts Education

Rebecca Mead of The New Yorker explores how technology and business worlds try to bring their expertise and passions to schooling. Having worked in New York City during the height of the Bloomberg-Klein reforms, I can attest both to the potential and the problems of such efforts. Here’s how Mead starts off:

Seen from the outside, AltSchool Brooklyn, a private school that opened in Brooklyn Heights last fall, does not look like a traditional educational establishment. There is no playground attached, no crossing guard at the street corner, and no crowd of children blocking the sidewalk in the morning. The school is one floor up, in a commercial building overlooking Montague Street. On the building’s exterior is a logo: a light-blue square, with rounded corners, bearing the word “alt.” It looks like an iPhone app awaiting the tap of a colossal finger.